Tag Archives: Chemical Weapons. Syria

If I had to teach a journalism class this week, I think I’d elect to discuss two very different perspectives on the chemical attack on Damascus suburbs on August 21 — one written by the London Independent’s Robert Fisk and the other for a rival paper, the Telegraph, by Richard Spencer. Links are here:

Fisk does what Fisk too often does, alas: speculate an anti-Western line based on unnamed sources. He has unnamed UN sources and an unnamed Syrian solider. He cites Russian evidence – export papers — that Bashar al-Assad couldn’t have carried out the attack because the Russian missiles used to deliver the toxic agent, Sarin, had never been sold to Syria but to Libya, among others, according to the Russians, he says. No documentary evidence is supplied or any details.

And then to conclude – he quotes an unnamed Syrian journalist who speculates the West might been involved because they wanted an excuse to attack Assad. An excuse? Many people would say there have been excuses galore supplied by Assad himself in the past two-and-half years – “excuses” that can’t be doubted.

One question Fisk never answers because he never poses the obvious question is: why if the Russian evidence is so conclusive has Moscow not made it public?

Then we have Richard Spencer’s article. It is based not on conjecture but on an on-the-record exclusive interview with Brigadier-General Zaher al-Sakat, a former chemical weapons chief in Assad’s own army. He was the chief scientific officer in the Syrian army’s fifth division and ran chemical weapons operations in the country’s southern Deraa province.

The general, who defected earlier this year, told Spencer “he was ordered (by his superiors) three times to use chemical weapons against his own people, but could not go through with it and replaced chemical canisters with ones containing harmless bleach.”

“Gen Sakat said the regime wanted to ‘annihilate’ the opposition using any means, and said he received his first orders to use chemical weapons in October last year. On three occasions, he said he was told to use a mixture of phosgene and two other chlorine-based agents against civilian targets in Sheikh Masqeen, Herak, and Busra, all rebel-held districts.”

He insists “all such orders had to come from the top – President Assad himself – despite insistent denials by the regime that it has never used chemical weapons.” Sakat believes chemical weapons have been used 34 times, rather than the 14 occasions cited by Western international intelligence agencies.

So, we have the UN inspectors’ report on the August 21 attack that most experts argue points the finger at Assad and we have a former Assad military officer saying he had been ordered last year to use chemical weapons. Who do you believe, and if you were teaching the journalism class, wouldn’t you hope the students noticed that one was based on verifiable facts and a named credible source saying toxic agents have been used in the past by Assad and the other on pure…?